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Not much to update here I had to scramble to gear up for a fishing trip last week on Weds night/Thurs, so my rod and knife shop both look like a grenade hit them; things were flying around when I was looking for stuff! I went fishing Friday and Sat (pics below!), Sun I was too sore to move. Monday I was up at Lamson getting my fillet knife designs finalized, and Tues I had an eye exam/new glasses. Vacation ended Tues night, so I am back to the 3rd shift grind. Today I went to Woodcraft to exchange my 12" disc sander. The disc had a big cup in it and I couldn't get a block flat/square, so I have been down to 1 12" sander, which has slowed me down. The new one looks much better, so I hope to be back in the shop tomorrow!!

So I have a Artifex Boning knife with Curly Maple handle an Curly Maple saya, rehandle of a Masahiro Fish knife, and handles to be installed and shaped on a 11" AEB-L fillet knife and shaped on a 6" Damascus fillet knife, plus a saya for a 300mm gyuto and then rehandles of 3 other knives (carbonext Suji, Hiromoto AS Santoku and Tanaka petty), plus the 2 Honyaki handles. And a bread knife I am trying to find white pin material for. So I am pretty busy the next few weeks and I will have between 12 and 20 hrs of OT this coming week with students returning to school.

Me with 2 of the 3 Albacore/LongFin tuna we caught on the trip:

One of the other guys that was with us with the 90# BigEye Tuna that he caught:

Introducing Trophy Fillet knife to Cold Albacore. The production model will have a 9" blade in AEB-L, full flat grind, a little less belly up near the tip and a little flex. This one was a bit stiff and the extra belly made it hard to get the tip into play. The production will also have a Poly handle.

It's been a while since I dressed out any fish, let alone tuna! I was pretty rusty on the first one, but got much better on the second. I remembered a twist and snap trick I saw somewhere where I slice around the collar of the tuna, leaving the spine and cut intact and then moving the tuna so the head is hanging off of the board. From there, you push the head off the board quickly while twisting it, it will usually snap the spine and also pull out most of the entrails. I tried to get the guy to wear the BigEye head like a hat, but he wouldn't go for it!

It was a VERY long day! We left the dock at 330pm instead of 2pm due to traffic issues with one of the guys (car accident/car fire) and trolleded until 11pm, and then drifted overnight until 4am. We got covered up with 6+ Albacore tuna at the same time, with only 5 of us to fight them. I got my first in the boat, 2 of the other guys boated one and I grabbed a second rod, but the fish came off early in that battle, so we went 3/6 on the Albacore. We drifted at night and were seeing big marks on the fish finders, but nothing was hungry except the smaller big eye that was around 90# or so. We went to start trolling again at 4am and my uncle noticed that one engine has no oil pressure and was blowing out soot. So here we are, 80 miles South of Montauk with 1 engine, so we start the slow troll back home. We rounded Montauk 10 hours later and a few minutes after that, the batteries died and all electronics shut down, so we idled in the rest of the way and had to call SeaTow for a tow into the harbor and to dock us since we were on 1 engine barely and no electronics. It was over a 12hr ride home. But we made it to dock safely and with some nice tuna, so all in all, it was a good trip!

Bikeman

Post subject: Re: Update

Posted: Wed Aug 21, 2013 5:21 pm

Joined: Thu Jun 13, 2013 12:25 pmPosts: 434

Congrats on a nice bunch of fish! All you are missing for a Tuna Grand Slam are some bluefin and yellowfin. It must have been crazy with 6 albacore hooked up off the back of the boat at once, especially at night! The Big Eye Tuna is a special prize. Your fillet knife looks good, 9" is the right length for most larger fish and you are right about the flexible blade and tip. It's perfect for big striped bass and Bluefish. Let me know when they are available. Bill B.

Yeah, crazy was an understatement! The first Albacore hit and was peeling off line as his buddies decided to join the party and started crashing our spread. We had 6 fish on at one time, sometimes one would come off and then another fish would hit the same rod right afterwards! We normally stop trolling when we can't see the lines because its very easy to tangle up/cut off the other lines/gear and it's harder to see the angles to fight them. But we did well with 3/6 coming into the boat in that chaos!

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